Texas lawmakers in vanguard of GOP efforts to repeal ‘Obamacare’

Texas Congressional Delegation at work

? ? ?

With some powerful Texans in the forefront, Republican lawmakers are returning to a deeply divided Capitol Hill amid tenacious election-year tactics to get rid of President Barack Obama’s health care plan.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that upheld the Affordable Care Act, the GOP-controlled House may vote as soon as Wednesday on outright repeal.

“Ultimately Obamacare is going to be repealed at the ballot box,” says Texas Republican Congressman Kevin Brady of The Woodlands, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

“But in the meantime, our vote will demonstrate that we are committed to repealing the law in its entirety to start with a fresh slate as well as to point out serious flaws in the law,” adds the former state lawmaker and Chamber of Commerce executive.

In the Democratic-led Senate, where leaders dismiss the upcoming House action as “just a show vote,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn and other Senate GOP leaders are looking for added Republican senators in the fall elections and an arcane legislative tool known as budget reconciliation to help target Obama’s health care blueprint early next year.

As chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign operation, Cornyn is angling to return the Senate to Republican control by adding a net gain of at least four new Republican senators to the 47 Senate seats already held by Republicans.

“Come January, 51 Republican senators could turn around Obamacare,” says Cornyn, a second-term senator from San Antonio. “The budget reconciliation process is somewhat of a gift.”

“The court’s ruling does not settle the debate,” says Hutchison, who leaves office in January. “Congress can stop implementation of this disastrous government takeover of health care by repealing the law — or by de-funding implementation.”

Rep. Kevin Brady, R-The Woodlands

The little-known bud-get reconciliation procedure, dating from the 1974 Congressional Budget Act, enables a politically-divided Congress to drive through controversial tax and spending legislation to finance the annual budget blueprint adopted by the House and Senate.

The measure limits debate in the House and the Senate to just 20 hours, bars Senate filibusters and enables a Senate majority with less than a 60-vote super-majority to approve legislation.

It has been used almost two dozen times since 1980 to break Senate logjams, helping Democrats win passage of Obama’s health care overhaul in 2009 and helping Republicans win passage of welfare reform in 1996 as well as $1 trillion in tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush in 2001, 2003 and 2005.

Amid the current political gridlock on Capitol Hill, with Republicans controlling the House and Democrats controlling the Senate, “there is zero chance the health care law will be repealed this year,” says political scientist Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia.

“But if Republicans gain enough seats in the Senate, hold the House and win the presidency, Obamacare will be dramatically changed or abolished,” Sabato adds.

In addition to gaining seats, Republicans also would have to overcome Senate rules and various budget calculations to harness budget reconciliation in their bid to overturn the health care law, cautions Richard Kogan, an analyst at the independent Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

“It is doable,” says the former adviser to the White House budget office during the first two years of the Obama administration and a veteran of 21 years on the staff of the House Budget Committee. “It may be they can’t do it all with a simple repeal of everything — but they can certainly get rid of almost all of the things that they object to by a majority vote,” Kogan adds.

Picking the elements to save and the elements to scrap could pose immense political challenges for the Republican effort, cautions Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

“You can talk all you want about repeal and you can show you have a road map for doing it if you get elected,” Ornstein said. “But you leave the system in tatters if you do it without a reasonable replacement, and they’ve got nothing — that’s the bottom line.”